Delivery

Paper pusher, I’ll tell you what it feels like
To spend the exact cash you make the same

Night you make it. That sky velveted as
An empty ring box. Disintegration coming out

Of the speakers again. Neck-deep in the quarry swimming
Hole. This thing between us like snapping a bar of cold

Chocolate. I like wading into my weakness &
Treading there like the final girl. This life no

Bigger than a drugstore makeup aisle, than waking
Only to learn of the late-night car accident. Who said

To stitch shut is to mend. Each morning the dogs kept
Us alive, even when we hadn’t planned it. The room slow

Spun the way the water had moved around us, & the bare
Light on the water, those apparitions—our love’s

Strategy, a deer tendering into the kitchen through
A back door left open, through the rooms where we

Undressed. Bring me to myself & sew the horizon
Into place. Out of the winedark that sun we like

Was coming back into style. What we borrowed
We know we cannot return. I held your jaw

Like a piece of fruit. Your hand rested on the warm
Animal between us, running in its sleep.